Category Archives: Briefly noted

For its Spring 2006 event, the Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, will mount a concert titled ‘VIVA REGONDI’. Among the performers: concertinists Douglas Rogers, Wim Wakker, and Allan Atlas, together with guitarist Alexander Dunn, mezzo-soprano Julia Grella O’Connell, and pianist Jin-Ok Lee. As for the repertory, one thing seems fairly certain at this point: the concert will conclude with Regondi’s arrangement of melodies from Verdi’s La Traviata arranged for two trebles, baritone, and piano. This is likely the first live concert devoted entirely to Regondi’s music since he was laid to rest in 1872. The precise date, time, and venue: Friday, 17 March 2006, 7:30 P.M., Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue (Fifth Avenue and 34th Street), New York. We will try to organize workshops for the following day. For further information: <http://web.gc.cuny.edu/freereed> (scroll down to ‘Announcements’ in the left-hand margin).

We might note the founding of a new scholarly society (and a very friendly one at that): the North American British Music Studies Association, which is devoted to fostering research on and performances of—as well as generally publicizing—the rich tradition of British music of all styles and periods. Information about NABMSA (yes, that ‘BM’ is tough) can be found at <http://www.nabmsa.org>. Needless to say, new members are always welcome!

On Friday, 18 June 2005, the Horniman Museum, London, went public with its digitized, online version of the twelve extant nineteenth-century Wheatstone ledgers/day books. Digitized by Robert Gaskins in truly spectacular fashion, the ledgers consist of nine sales ledgers, which are housed in the Wayne Archive (named after Neil Wayne) and list day-to-day sales of instruments from 1835 through 23 May 1870 (with names of buyers, serial numbers of instruments, and, as of 1 January 1851, prices paid), two salary books, one for 1845-1846, the other for 1848-1849, and one production book that dates and describes instruments with serial numbers 18061 (March 1866) – 21353 (22 December 1891) as they came off the ‘assembly line’. One can view the ledgers at <http://www.horniman.info>.

To understate things: with the ledgers now just a click-of-the-mouse away, the Horniman Museum and Robert Gaskins have provided an invaluable impetus to historical research on the concertina. Hats and thumb-straps off to both of them.

As part of a continuous effort to augment and refine its collection, The Department of Musical Instruments at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City purchased several free-reed instruments offered at a June 2003 auction in Vichy, France.

Among the instruments purchased were two concertinas manufactured by Wheatstone & Co. One is a very early English concertina, apparently without serial number (Acq. No. 2003.380— see Fig. 1). With its three-fold bellows, hexagonal rosewood casing, and twelve visible levers on each side (with mother-of-pearl key-flaps and ivory buttons), the instrument is a rare example of what Neil Wayne has dubbed Wheatstone’s early ‘open-pallet’ design, 1 and it can probably be dated from 1833-1834 by analogy with both Wheatstone’s well-known No. XXXII, currently housed at the Horniman Museum, London, as part of the Neil Wayne Collection, and an unnumbered Wheatstone in the private collection of Mr Stephen Chambers, Dublin. 2

The second purchase, dating from the 1850s, is an early ‘Duett’ concertina (Acq. No. 2003.381— see Fig. 2), designed in a way that permitted a melody, played in the right hand, to be joined by a simple accompaniment in the left hand. This instrument has a (German-looking) rectangular, mahogany casing, four-fold bellows, and twenty-four buttons, with a range of g to c’’’ (with the only ‘accidental’ being F sharp). 3 To help introduce the instrument, Wheatstone published an instruction book titled Instructions for Performing on Wheatstone’s Patent Duett Concertina (c. 1855),4 along with twelve books of arrangements of popular music. Both instruments were purchased with funds from the Robert Alonzo Lehman Bequest, and are currently on display along with other free-reed instruments, including a Wheatstone symphonion (Acq. No. 89.4.2985).

The museum’s collection also houses two other concertinas of note: another Wheatstone English, No. 11758, probably dating from late 1861/early 1862 (Acq. No. 89.4.1124),5 and a twentieth-century Lachenal, No. 46875 (Acq. No. 63.211.5a,b), which belonged to the well-known folk-singer Burl Ives (1909-1995), who donated it to the museum in 1963. 6

Within the next year the department hopes to mount a temporary exhibition of a selection of its free-reed instruments in the Musical Instrument Galleries.

Finally, the Department of Musical Instruments welcomes serious researchers by appointment. For access, please contact the department at the following address: Department of Musical Instruments, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028.

2. Wheatstone No. XXXII is Item CMC 1278 in the Wayne Collection; for a photograph, see the article in note 1; there is a photograph of the instrument in the Chambers collection in Stephen Chambers, ‘An Annotated Catalogue of Historic Free-Reed Instruments from My Private Collection’, in Harmonium und Handharmonika: Bericht des 20. Musikinstrumentbau-Symposiums 1999. Michaelsteiner Konferenzberichte, 62, ed. Monika Lustig (Blankenburg: Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein, 2002), Plate 10; now available online: http://www.maccann-duet.com/. Developed by Mr Robert Gaskins, the website http://www.maccann-duet.com contains a rich collection of materials relating to the concertina, especially the Duett/Duet concertina.

3. On the early Wheatstone Duetts, the fingering system of which eventually formed the core of John Hill Maccann’s later Maccann-system Duet, see Robert Gaskins, ‘Early Wheatstone Duett System Duets’, online: http://www.maccann-duet.com/. The instrument is ‘German-looking’ enough to have deceived those who compiled the auction catalogue into attributing it to Friedrich Uhlig of Chemnitz.

5. Although the Wheatstone sales ledger C1052 (Horniman Museum, London, Wayne Archive), which lists sales from 21 October 1859 to 30 April 1864, does not have a notice for this particular instrument, we may note the following: (1) an instrument numbered in the 11700s (No. 11734) is sold for the first time on 3 September 1861 (p. 57); (2) the first instrument from the 11750s sequence (No. 11753) was sold on 9 January 1862 (p. 64); and (3) No. 11759 was sold on 21 February 1862 (p. 66). My thanks to Allan Atlas for this information.

6. I should note that this concertina was actually used in performance by Allan Atlas at a concert given at the museum in December 1997.